Ian Prattis has had a remarkable life. Or rather, remarkable lives. He can recall several.

Prattis, a 71-year-old retired professor of anthropology and religion, writes about two of those lives in a new book, Trailing Sky Six Feathers, described on the jacket blurb as “Indiana Jones meets the Buddha with a dash of Celestine Prophecy.”

In this life, Prattis, who calls himself a Spiritual Warrior for Planetary Care, Peace and Social Justice, taught at Carleton University for 37 years, was the first Westerner to be ordained in India as a guru, leads weekly Buddhist meditation classes in the basement of his west-end Ottawa bungalow, and founded Friends for Peace Canada at the outbreak of the Iraq war.

Oh, yes — he also lived in a hermitage in Gatineau Park with his pet wolf for four years.

In the other life, he was the chief of an Indian band in 18th-century Arizona, fending off Apache attacks, married to Trailing Sky Six Feathers, a powerful medicine woman in whose arms he died in 1777. As his life ebbed away, she vowed: “I will find you, my husband, I will find you.”

In his book, a mix of memoir, mysticism and manifesto, the British-born Prattis describes both lives and the pivotal training he received from four native North American sages that ultimately allowed him to reunite spiritually with his “muse,” Trailing Sky.

He issues a call for “spiritual awakening,” necessary to ensure the survival of a world pushed to the edge of a dangerous precipice by climate change, ecosystem and financial collapse, corruption, terrorism and anarchy.

It’s hard to predict how people will receive his book, Prattis acknowledges. For the longest time, his own logical, intellectually trained mind resisted accepting the fantastical tale.

But ultimately “the dots kept connecting up too tightly and I could no longer object in my mind,” he says. “It was a story that I was compelled to write.”

In his book, a mix of memoir, mysticism and manifesto, Ian Prattis describes two of his lives and the pivotal training he received from four native North American sages that ultimately allowed him to reunite spiritually with his ‘muse,’ Trailing Sky.Chris Roussakis /
Ottawa Citizen

Though he self-published his book through Xlibris, a company owned by Random House and Penguin, the firm’s managers were so impressed that they commissioned a screenplay for a possible Hollywood movie.

Prattis was “stunned” at the brilliance of the screenplay. If it’s ever filmed, “I think this will be an instance where the movie is better than the book,” he jokes.

Prattis was sexually abused by a relative when he was four years old, but he blanked out the memories until his middle years.

Until he remembered the abuse, he couldn’t comprehend the anger raging inside him. “I was wild,” he says. “I used to get into bar fights. Emotionally, I was out of control.”

It’s hard to imagine that now. Prattis today is almost preternaturally calm. He and his wife, Carolyn, have simplified their lives. They don’t own a car, get around mostly by bicycle and public transit, and nurture an abundant organic vegetable garden, whose bounty they share with friends and neighbours.

His journey started about 35 years ago, when he began decades of spiritual training with White Eagle Woman, an Ojibway shaman from a reserve near Sault Ste. Marie.

When they first met, White Eagle Woman “looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I don’t like you at all,’ ” Prattis recalls. “But she said, ‘I’ve been instructed by my ancestors to train you.’ ”

It was during that training that Prattis started remembering things about his past life. “It was a very slow process of remembering. I had to let the logic go and let the intuition speak more loudly.”

In the early 1990s, Prattis retreated to a hermitage, “a small cottage near Parking Lot 7 in Kingsmere.” He lived there full time, commuting to his job at the university.

His constant companion was a timber wolf he had encountered in the wilds of British Columbia who “made it clear that he was to come back with me to Quebec,” Prattis says. He dubbed the animal Wolfie, a name he dryly describes as “highly original.”

The shamanic journeys he undertook culminated in a vivid dream vision in 2008 in which he met Trailing Sky in eagle form and finally fully remembered his past life.

Trailing Sky, Prattis says, “represents the feminine aspect of Earth wisdom, the feminine face of the Buddha,” to which he has surrendered. “If only men would surrender to it, it would be a darned sight easier,” he says ruefully.

Given the existential threats facing us, spiritual awakening is essential, Prattis says. Without it, “all you can rely on is politics and economics. We need something more formidable than that.

“We seem to be waiting for a Gandhi, a Mandela or a Martin Luther King to step up and lead. They’re gone. It’s ordinary people that have to step up and make a difference.”

Spiritual awakening takes hard work and discipline, Prattis says. Living simply is important. So is mindfulness and developing community.

One key strategy, says Prattis, is to respond, rather than react, when others say or do things that upset you.

“Just a little drop of compassion, a little drop of equanimity. That’s all you need so that when a crisis hits, you don’t react, you respond. You respond by stepping back and just reflecting. Then you can look at it intelligently.”

It’s not necessary for everyone to awaken spiritually, Prattis observes. Two per cent would be sufficient — something he learned from Sai Baba, a prominent spiritual leader and guru in India who died in 2011.

“He said if two per cent of the world could learn to meditate, that is enough to transform consciousness,” Prattis says. “I think that’s doable.”

Consider Friends for Peace, he says, “which has grown in a way I could never imagine.” More than 50 organizations now participate in it. Even Mayor Jim Watson has lauded its contribution.

Friends for Peace supports the annual Ottawa Peace Camp, which brings together Israeli, Palestinian and Canadian youth leaders. It also dispenses modest peace grants to organizations in the city and globally. It is, says Prattis, “making a subtle difference.”

Despite the threat of approaching disaster, Prattis says, his book is fundamentally optimistic.

“It really does have a message of empowerment. No matter how dire the situation or how unusual or perilous, we can always come through.”

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